As a recently retired teacher of 33 years in the classroom, I enjoyed reading about Robin Cutler “stomping around the class on top of their desks” (Other lives, 29 July) and Michael Davies (Obituary, 30 August) “Fun was his method”.
How different from the academy-driven method of teaching today, with their prescribed schemes of work, detailed planning and tracking the teacher. We read often of how our exam-led education is not working and how we need to engage pupils. It seems to me that these two gentlemen were prime examples of creating engaging teaching and learning; I am sure their ex-pupils can remember their lessons vividly. Perhaps Ofsted could add a new statement to their grading – Fam – fun and memorable?
Alison Braniff
Lowestoft, Suffolk
• It was interesting to read David Robson’s article about “learning by teaching” (The big idea: how the ‘protege effect’ can help you learn almost anything, 9 September) and how the method was pioneered by the teacher Jean-Pol Martin, in the early 1980s, as a way of teaching the French language. He was certainly not the first teacher to understand the benefits of this way of learning, as I know from my own experience.
In 1956-57 I was in the sixth form, studying A-level sciences, at Porth County grammar school for girls. Our botany teacher, Miss Pennington – known to us as Penny – regularly used to insist that the upper-sixth students taught the lower-sixth students the whole of the plant physiology part of the botany syllabus. It certainly accelerated our learning and understanding of a rather complex subject – a fact that we didn’t fully appreciate until we got our A-level results and were delighted with the grades we achieved in botany.
Hilary Williams
Sheffield
